Tag: JOSEPH

Favourite “New” Music – May 2023

Mick Jagger famously said (though the exact wording is contested) that he’d rather be dead than playing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in his 40s. Mick turns 80 this year and he’s still at it, but you can’t deny that there is a cult around youth in pop music. The so-called 27 Club of artists who died at that age includes Mick’s band mate Brian Jones, along with lots of people for whom last names are enough of an introduction, like Hendrix, Joplin, Cobain and Winehouse. The attention paid to this odd phenomenon is out of proportion to its reality as a mere cultural footnote, since it ignores the many, many more artists – such as, say, Mick Jagger and the rest of the Rolling Stones – who carried on making music into their 70s and beyond.

Two of those elder statesmen, Paul Simon and Smokey Robinson, released albums in May, and they reflect rather different approaches to life at its outer edge.

Unless you’re listening carefully, Simon’s album, “Seven Psalms”, can come across as ponderous and overly serious, the title pretentious enough before you get to the very pretentious apparent lack of song titles (which exist, he just makes you look for them) and lots of references to “the Lord”. But it’s actually rather fun: shambling and messy. Simon is like that guy in the corner at a party who brought his guitar for no good reason and is just picking away and accidentally stumbles onto a melody that works and just plays it out, coming back to it whenever energy or ambition flag. He even gets the pretty girl who he’s been side-eying all night to jump in a few times. It really is an older person’s record: he’s earned the right to tell the story his way: meandering, languid, taking his time – like your mother taking 20 minutes (including a stop for tea biscuits with jam) to tell you the 2-minute tale of your uncle’s medical concern. (Sorry, mom!)

Meanwhile, Smokey is also at that party, but while Paul is getting spiritual, Mr. Robinson is trying to get some action, if the title of “Gasms” didn’t already make that clear. His voice still sounds great (where Simon is basically talk-singing most of the time now), and the result is a lush, relaxed (he knows he’s going to score), bedroom-eyes-in-musical-form record. It’s like they are playing out the Prince duality – the spirit vs the flesh – and in this case, the flesh wins, at least initially. I liked the Simon record better on the second play (I was bored and barely paying attention the first time out), but Smokey held up nicely on replay, too. I suspect “Seven Psalms” will continue to grow for me, while “Gasms” will remain the lovely gem it is right now.

They don’t all go out this way. Anne Murray gave up singing for pay (I assume she still sings while working on her sourdough, or whatever the hell retired multimillionaires do with their days) at age 63 before she (her words, not mine) stopped being good at it. Tina Turner, having proven for any doubters her greatness, released her last full album of new material just before turning 60. But it’s hard to walk away like that: Frank Sinatra retired at 55, then was back two years later.

The artists below who are still with us are (mostly) much younger, and maybe some of them will still be making albums (or whatever we’re doing with music then) when they hit 80, too. For now, they at least pleased me more this past month than did the above masters, which is no small feat.

  • The Byrds – The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968)
  • Young Black Teenagers – Young Black Teenagers (1991) (That none of them were Black was permissible only because Public Enemy had their backs.)
  • Gin Blossoms – New Miserable Experience (1992) (Knowing none of their songs, I saw them open for (I think) Elvis Costello while touring for this record. A group of teenage girls in front of us sang along to every tune and danced ecstatically, then left before the headliner came out. I didn’t understand it then. I do now.)
  • Material Issue – Destination Universe (1992)
  • The Muffs – Blonder and Blonder (1995) (I listened to a lot of female-fronted punk and post-punk this month, which is where this and the next three albums fit in.)
  • The Kowalskis – All Hopped up on Goofballs (1999)
  • Tina & the Total Babes – She’s So Tuff (2001)
  • Manda & the Marbles – More Seduction (2003)
  • Tinted Windows – Tinted Windows (2009) (I am unable to explain why it took me this long to listen to an album from members of Cheap Trick, Smashing Pumpkins, Fountains of Wayne and Hansen.)
  • Cossbysweater – Cossbysweater (2013) (Proving that Allie Goertz is much more than an object of nerd desire for Nerf Herder.)
  • Tacocat – This Mess Is A Place (2019)
  • Indigo De Souza – All of This Will End (2023)
  • The National – First Two Pages of Frankenstein (2023)
  • Joseph – The Sun (2023)
  • The Utopiates – The Sun Also Rises (2023)
  • Rae Sremmurd – Sremm 4 Life (2023)
  • Kesha – Gag Order (2023)
  • Alex Lahey – The Answer Is Always Yes (2023)
  • Blues Lawyer – All in Good Time (2023) (I don’t think they actually are blues lawyers, since a newish indie band can’t afford such a lifestyle, but maybe this record starts them on that path.)
  • Sleaford Mods – UK GRIM (2023) (There is something nutbar about these guys that I find irresistible.)

Favourite “New” Music – November 2022

Well, it’s December, and that means Christmas music everywhere you turn: on your television, in the shops you attend, at your doctor’s office, on your cab driver’s Sirius XM device. Even in this age of being able to have almost complete control over programming your listening life, it’s entirely unavoidable, which is unfortunate if, like me, you don’t much care for the stuff.

Let’s be honest, okay? A lot of the holiday’s music sucks. It’s saccharine and simplistic and preachy and waaaay too Christian. Yes, I know whose theoretical birth we are meant to be celebrating, but I’ve read a good chunk of the New Testament, and most people calling themselves Christian don’t seem to do a very good job of emulating the big kahuna. For the rest of us, the season is really just an excuse to overeat/drink, sleep in a few times, and have people buy us stuff, which is pretty awesome, but hardly worthy of a whole musical cottage industry.

And everyone sings the same damned songs over and over and over again. You could get from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve just listening to “Silent Night! Holy Night!” (What’s with the exclamation marks?) or variants thereof. That isn’t hyperbole: Second Hand Songs lists 3880 versions (and that’s probably gone up between writing this sentence and posting it), including from such luminaries as Chet Atkins, Booker T. & The M.G.’s, Nana Mouskouri, Can, David Hasselhoff (in German, of course) and the Queen of Christmas herself, Mariah Carey. Another Mariah cover, “O Holy Night”, has 2037 versions, including efforts from Petula Clark, Joan Baez, Andrea Bocelli and Skydiggers. I could go on and on – just like Christmas music does.

My wife, though she may protest a bit as to what degree, loves Christmas music. She isn’t a zealot or without discernment: she knows shit when she hears it. But she could not imagine going through the holiday season not listening to it, while I will likely start Christmas morning this year listening to something like Nirvana or the Sex Pistols.

We needed a compromise playlist, and to that end I offer my year-ending gift to those who are closer to my end of the Christmas music enjoyment level spectrum. Christmas Songs That Don’t Suck is (at this moment) roughly 7 hours of tolerable and sometimes even enjoyable holiday-themed songs. (My definition of a Christmas song may not always match yours.) It’s length varies from season to season, as I get sick of songs or find new ones that I like (I recently added 8 tracks from the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas special – and, yes, that’s a real thing), and while it is a Mariah-free zone, it includes songs from Boyz II Men, Queen, Tom Petty, Dolly Parton, Fountains of Wayne, Carrie Underwood and – shiver – the Biebs, plus lots more. It isn’t all G-rated – you may choose to usher the kids out of the room when “Homo Christmas” starts up – but it’s a more diverse celebration of the season than what you can find on your usual radio station or Spotify playlist.

My 5 favourite songs on there, in no particular order, are probably:

  • Bare Naked Ladies – Elf’s Lament
  • The Pogues – Fairytale of New York
  • The Waitresses – Christmas Wrapping
  • Run-DMC – Christmas in Hollis (To paraphrase Argyle, this IS a Christmas song and “Die Hard” IS a Christmas movie.)
  • Lydia Liza & Josiah Lemanski – Baby, It’s Cold Outside (#MeToo)

Merry Christmas!

Now, on to my favourite listens of the month just passed.

  • The Moody Blues – Days of Future Passed (1967)
  • Sly and the Family Stone – A Whole New Thing (1967)
  • Omega – 10000 lépés (1969) (The most successful Hungarian rock band ever. How could I not check them out?)
  • Curtis Mayfield – Curtis (1970)
  • Jimmy Cliff – The Harder They Come (1972) (My continuing search to discover reggae that I enjoy finally struck oil.)
  • John Lennon – Walls and Bridges (1974)
  • Journey – Journey (1975) (Never much of a fan during their chart-topping heyday, this rookie outing was a very different-sounding band.)
  • The Kings – The Kings Are Here (1980) (Good old Canadian new wavey rock.)
  • Was (Not Was) – Born to Laugh at Tornadoes (1983) (Yet another record that I owned, never played straight through, and now celebrate.)
  • Los Lobos – How Will the Wolf Survive? (1984) (On which I discovered that Mexican polka is a thing, and a pretty amazing thing at that.)
  • Cameo – Word Up! (1986)
  • Front 242 – Front by Front (1988)
  • Wendy James – Now Ain’t the Time for Your Tears (1993)
  • Guster – Ganging Up on the Sun (2006) (I loved the two albums before this one, but for some reason stopped paying attention to the band, which was clearly a mistake.)
  • Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment – Surf (2015)
  • The Ballroom Thieves – Unlovely (2020)
  • JOSEPH – The Trio Sessions: Vol. 2 (2021)
  • Pool Kids – Pool Kids (2022)
  • Armani Caesar – The Liz 2 (2022)
  • Fousheé – SoftCORE (2022) (A delight from start to finish. Already a Grammy nominee as a songwriter, if she doesn’t become a major star, it won’t be for lack of talent.)

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash.